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Several members of a Charlotte youth group gathered Tuesday morning outside a driver license office on North Tryon Street in a protest for immigration reform.
Leaders of the group say they’ll stage another event Wednesday afternoon in Charlotte’s uptown area. That protest originally was planned for midday Tuesday, but organizers say they are postponing it due to cold weather.
About a dozen people from United 4 the Dream, a youth advocacy group tied to the Latin American Coalition, began protesting shortly after 9 a.m. Tuesday at the N.C. Department of Motor Vehicles office in the 8400 block of North Tryon Street.
The group left after about 90 minutes.
Members of the group were lobbying the DMV to reinstate driving privileges to teens in North Carolina who originally received licenses as part of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program started two years ago by the Obama administration. North Carolina had been allowing teens in the DACA program to get licenses, during the administrator of Democratic Gov. Bev Perdue.
But when Republican Pat McCrory took office last week, the state changed directions and said those driving privileges had been granted in error.
The attorney general’s office last week ruled that the DACA teens are entitled to a driver’s license.
A bigger protest against the DMV’s policy change was planned Tuesday morning in Raleigh.
Elver Barrios, a youth leader with United 4 the Dream, said in a news statement that the policy change “is mean-spirited politics.”
“There is no reason for our state to deny driver’s licenses to people that the federal government says are fine to be here,” Barrios said.
The Wednesday afternoon rally uptown is being billed as “youth stage theater.”
Members of United 4 the Dream say they will act out what they say happens daily under the current immigration system -- family separation, undocumented high school graduates, and what they say are myths and stereotypes about immigrants.
“I want people to understand what it might actually be like,” event organizer Ramon Garibaldo, a freshman at Johnson C. Smith University, said. “I want people to interact with us and the scenes, and to understand the role they play in this broken system.”
The Observer’s Davie Hinshaw contributed
